December 23, 2014 edition
It all began with imagination and the desire to rejoice.
Saint Nicholas became Sinterklas who became Santa Claus. In a distant cold continent, a legend about a saintly man from the 4th century developed into a tradition whose origins and elements are no longer clear. There are traces of the pre-Christian German belief about the god Odin, but there are also images shaped by a poem that was spread in the 19th century, and then reinforced by a Coca-Cola advertisement.
Read More
More Sidelines articles in other editions
December 16, 2014 edition
Only nomads and explorers know: the world cannot be explained with rigid boundaries. The space of life is never constant. Life is not built with fences.
But Kant, the philosopher, was not a nomad. He who compared human knowledge to 'a small land with many boundaries' was born in the town of Knigsberg in the north east of Germany and died in the same place. From 1724 to 1804from when he was a newborn babe until he was in his coffinhe did not step one meter outside this town near the Baltic Sea. He was a stay-at-home.
Read More
January 1, 1970 edition
Anthony Salim prefers batik shirts to any other kind of shirt. "I wear batik because I like wearing batik. Some people like to wear Gucci because they want to be seen in it. It's their choice...For me, I wear batik for comfort."
Anthony, Liem Sioe Liong's son who took over his father's huge business network after the fall of the Suharto regime that supported it, is vividly depicted in Richard Borsuk and Nancy Chng's book Liem Sioe Liong's Salim Group published this yeararguably the best book published in the last decade about the history of business in Indonesia.
Read More
January 1, 1970 edition
When the earth's destruction is speeding up, when extreme drought and heat are killing the forests and melting the icecaps and the sea can no longer hold the overflow and cities are drowning, when one day this happens, what will humankind do? "Rage, rage against the dying of the light," as the line in Dylan Thomas's poem says.
In the film Interstellar, Brand, the old scientist, utters these lines as he is dying. He has been secretly preparing for humans to flee the rapidly deteriorating Earth: humankind must find another planet as an alternative. But this utopia remains utopia: a fine dream that has no place. Fourteen explorers are launched, but without trace, without assurance.
Read More
January 1, 1970 edition
Religion, race, hatred: elements that easily fuse. In Shakespeare's famous play The Merchant of Venice, they combine and we witness a 'comedy' that cannot make us laugh.
The main character is Antonio, a rich merchant in the Italian city of Venice, a center of 15th century world trade. In Rialto, the main business area of Venice, he is known as the owner of four argosies, huge trading ships that sail as far as Tripoli, Mexico, England and the Indies.
Read More
November 18, 2014 edition
His name is Sekarpandan. He is short, with a huge behind. In Cirebon style wayang kulit, he is one of the nine clown-retainers who accompany the five Pandawa.
Sekarpandan got his bodily form after taunting Semar, who wanted to marry Sekarpandan's older sister Sudiragen. In the fight that ensued, Sekarpandan lost and was thrown into a clump of pandanus, immediately changing form: he became a replica of the person he had been taunting. Also in character.
Read More
November 11, 2014 edition